NASA's IBEX reveals surprising data about the region of space just beyond the Solar System

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 12:47

News & Events - Engineering News

February 1, 2012

After studying the region of space located just beyond the Solar System, scientists found it differed significantly from their prior understanding.

Researchers have long endeavored to study the outer reaches of space, but that drive has sometimes led them to overlook the less conspicuous area located just beyond the Sun's reach. However, armed with NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), they recently gleaned surprising details about the universe.

Scientists said that they discovered helium, hydrogen, oxygen and neon in the region just outside the solar system using the IBEX satellite. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the findings represent the first such example of researchers successfully identifying such elements in the region, and that they could use the information to understand how they are distributed differently in different areas of space.

IBEX was engineered to study the boundary between interstellar space and a region of space known as the heliosphere, which is influenced by solar winds and the Sun's magnetic field. The heliosphere largely deflects charged particles, but those without any electrical charge are able to penetrate it. Scientists said that concentrations of these elements are starkly different in the Solar System and in the heliosphere.

There are more oxygen atoms, for example, floating in the Solar System than there are in the closest portions of interstellar space. Scientists said they were unable to definitively explain why there are fewer oxygen atoms in the expansive region that stretches between stars, but they posited they could be hidden in dust or ice, The Associated Press reports.

"We discovered this big puzzle – that the matter just outside of our solar system doesn't look like the material inside," Southwest Research Institute scientist David McComas said.

NASA launched the IBEX in 2008, and it has hovered approximately 200,000 miles above Earth since then. The satellite identifies particles that are entering the Solar System and has given scientists an exceedingly detailed picture of what kinds of elemental particles make up regions of space beyond the Solar System.

Scientists said the IBEX found that for every 20 neon atoms that reached its detectors from the interstellar medium, 74 oxygen atoms were also present. That composition is strikingly different from the Solar System's, in which the ratio is 20 neon atoms to 111 oxygen atoms.

The divergent elemental compositions prompted researchers to hypothesize two alternate theories, according to McComas. He said that researchers reckon that the Sun could have formed in a different area in the interstellar cloud, one where oxygen concentrations are higher. On the other hand, some researchers contend the missing oxygen molecules could simply be hidden in either dust or ice in the interstellar cloud.

The Sun is only passing through this particular interstellar cloud, and scientists said that over the course of hundreds – or potentially thousands – of years, it will exit the cloud and situate itself in an entirely new setting. McComas asserted that the most recent data has upended the conventional understanding of the Solar System and interstellar space.

"Frankly, all the modelers now have to go back and try to get their models to work with a very different balance," he said.

The Voyager spacecraft is also studying the particular area of space, though it has been in service far longer than the IBEX. NASA launched the nuclear-powered Voyager in 1977 and it has been searching for information near the interstellar boundary since 2004, according to the AP. While Voyager has been hovering near the precipice of interstellar space for years, it is scheduled to cross firmly into the region within the next few years.